


hold me down

by gaykavinsky (lesbiankavinsky)



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, anyway, homophobic slurs cw, i had Theories y'all, it's fucking sad until it's not?, lots of mental health problems, thoroughly jossed after trk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-02
Updated: 2016-06-02
Packaged: 2018-07-11 18:46:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7065796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesbiankavinsky/pseuds/gaykavinsky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When they reach Adam’s floor, Ronan follows him to his room, always a few paces behind. Inside, Adam reaches for the lightswitch as the door falls back behind them but Ronan grabs his hand. For a moment, the panic returns. Ronan is going to murder him in his dark hotel room. But of course he doesn’t. Of course he just lifts Adams hand to his mouth and very gently kisses his palms, then his knuckles, then the pads of his thumbs. He speaks very softly. “God, I missed you."</p>
            </blockquote>





	hold me down

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this before TRK and never posted it, so it's now very very non-canon compliant. About a decade after the events of canon.

_ sold my soul to a three piece _

_ and he told me I was holy _

_ he’s got me down on both knees _

_ but it’s the devil that’s trying to  _

_ hold me down _

 

The victory party after Adam’s election to the House of Representatives is the first time he sees Ronan since -- he tries to think of the year it was, but the only words his brain will provide are  _ since Gansey _ . This is the first time he’s seeing Ronan since Gansey. He’s wearing a neat suit and for a moment Adam doubts that it’s actually him. It’s such an incongruous image that he momentarily entertains the idea that Ronan has some weird doppelganger, or maybe he’s forgotten one of the Lynch siblings, but then he sees the hook of his tattoo arcing up over the edge of his collar, unique and unmistakable. Adam has no doubt that Ronan is only here to see him, but he delays their meeting for a while, watching him from a safe distance. He’s drinking more than would generally be considered polite at this sort of event, and he’s even more distinctly hostile than usual among this crowd of celebrating Washington elites. Ronan, as distant from politics as he is, is a Democrat of the old school: Irish, rural, and largely uninterested in the concept of respectability. The rest of the crowd is as typically southern Republican as they come. They are genteel and blond and a little alarmed by Ronan. Adam is pleased by their discomfort and he isn’t sure what to do with that emotion. 

 

In the end, it’s Ronan who approaches Adam. He’s drunk in a way that would only be noticeable to someone who’s known Ronan a long time, so Adam notices immediately. 

 

“Congratulations, Congressman,” Ronan says, and it’s easily the most malicious greeting he’s had all night.

 

“Ronan.”

 

“So, you’re gonna be a Republican in Congress. You should write me postcards.  _ What I did to fuck up America today _ .”

 

“I thought you didn’t care about politics.”

 

“I care about hating the people who hate me. And you.”

 

“They don’t hate us.”

 

Ronan leans in, uncomfortably close. “I’m a pissed off faggot who runs a fucking animal rescue, I’m pretty sure these people hate me.”

 

“Well apparently they don’t hate me, they’re sending me to Congress.”

 

Ronan shrugs. “Yeah, well. They don’t know you, do they.”

 

Adam opens his mouth to reply, but he doesn’t have anything to say. As usual, Ronan is telling the truth. There’s plenty about his life that the people here don’t know and, if he has his way, will never know. Ronan turns and leaves, but Adam keeps catching glimpses of him in the corner of the room. Adam can tell he’s waiting for him, that he hasn’t come just to take a couple jabs at him, and it makes him tense the entire evening. It’s difficult to know whether, once Ronan gets him alone as he undoubtedly wants to, he’ll kiss him or punch him. 

 

The party winds down at around midnight and Ronan predictably follows Adam out into the hotel lobby. Tired of his shadow, Adam turns around to face him.

 

“What do you want, Lynch?”

 

Something softens in Ronan’s face and Adam regrets his tone. No,  _ soft _ isn’t the right word.  _ Soft  _ implies pliable, gentle, sweet. This is raw, and raw Ronan Lynch has nothing to do with soft.

 

“I missed you. I wanted to talk to you.”

 

“You missed me?” It seems improbable. After Gansey’s death, their separation had been abrupt and absolute. Ronan hadn’t exactly broken up with him, he’d just made it abundantly clear that he never wanted to lay eyes on Adam again. Which makes it strange that he’s here now, trailing after him in this D.C. hotel looking frighteningly vulnerable. The part of his brain that has always been and will likely always be dedicated to finding the worst possible outcome of a scenario and convincing him that it’s also the most likely one is screaming  _ he’s just trying to get you alone so he can do to you what you did to Gansey _ . But Ronan doesn’t look like he wants to kill Adam. He doesn’t even look like he wants to hit him. He looks like he’s in pain and Adam is the only thing that could possibly help. Adam takes a deep breath. “Come up to my room. We can talk.”

 

They stand next to each other in the elevator in silence, Adam nervously tapping his key card against his expensive new watch. Ronan is calmer. After all, he’s never had any difficulty with silence. When they reach Adam’s floor, Ronan follows him to his room, always a few paces behind. Inside, Adam reaches for the lightswitch as the door falls back behind them but Ronan grabs his hand. For a moment, the panic returns. Ronan is going to murder him in his dark hotel room. But of course he doesn’t. Of course he just lifts Adams hand to his mouth and very gently kisses his palms, then his knuckles, then the pads of his thumbs. He speaks very softly. “God, I missed you. I missed your fucking hands and the sound of your voice. Even your voice when you’re trying not to sound like yourself. Do you know how exhausting it’s been trying to hate you?”

 

Adam stands very still. He realizes after a moment that he’s holding his breath. As his eyes adjust to the dark, he becomes aware that Ronan is watching him, tentative and maybe even frightened. He’s waiting for Adam to make the next move because of course he is because he’s Ronan Lynch and this is the one area of life in which is anything but aggressive. Adam reminds himself to breath and pulls his hand away from Ronan’s to reach up and trace along his jawline. Ronan tilts his head in response to Adam’s touch and quietly his body language changes from anxious to relieved. 

“I missed you too.” And it’s true, though he’s been dedicating much of his time to ignoring that fact. Every day, it seems, he gets up and he  _ doesn’t  _ think about missing Ronan, he  _ doesn’t  _ think about what it was like waking up next to the person he loved (loves), he  _ doesn’t  _ think about the memory of having real friends. Friends he could be honest with. Friends who knew him. He reaches up and, cupping Ronan’s face in his hands, leans forward to kiss him. It’s strange, how easy it is to fall back into old habits. Ronan leans into him, pressing him against the door and everything about this is familiar to Adam, the weight of Ronan and his hands on Adam’s hips and the smell of him. But it would be a lie to say that it’s exactly the same as it used to be because there’s something terrible and desperate in the way Ronan kisses him and Adam is vaguely aware that he’s kissing Ronan the same way. They’re clinging to each other and Ronan is making small and needy noises, which is frighteningly unlike the Ronan that the rest of the world is familiar with. It takes only the barest press against Ronan’s shoulders to get him on his knees and Adam thinks just for a moment,  _ yes, I have missed this _ .

 

*

 

Adam can’t sleep that night. He’s watching Ronan sleep, curled up on his side with his knees pressed up to his chest. The red light from the sign across the street is strange against the dark lines of his tattoo that Adam has been tracing with the tip of his finger since Ronan fell asleep. The amount of detail in it that Adam has forgotten disturbs him and he wonders if part of what’s keeping him awake is the desire to memorize it. Part of it, he knows, is his anxiety over what they’re going to do in the morning. He absolutely can’t be seen leaving his room with Ronan, but he doesn’t know what Ronan would say if he told him he had to wait half an hour before following Adam out. He hadn’t been thinking clearly. He hadn’t been thinking at all, if he’s being honest. Or if he was, he was only thinking about Ronan and the prospect of being touched in any way other than a handshake. He needs a plan, but all he wants to do is press himself against Ronan’s back and fall asleep like that, like they used to, to exist in a world where it wouldn’t matter if he left his hotel room with a man. He closes his eyes and rests his forehead against the ridge of Ronan’s spine. He’s worked too damn hard to make this kind of stupid mistake. No, it isn’t a mistake. He wants to be with Ronan, he wants to take Ronan out for a fucking cup of coffee in the morning and kiss him on the street and go shopping for apartments with him, but doing any of those things would be the fastest way he can imagine to destroy his career. Some part of him wishes Ronan had never showed up. This isn’t a decision he wants to make. 

 

Ronan stirs and turns to him, his eyes only half open. “You need to sleep,” he says softly. “You don’t get enough sleep.”

 

Adam laughs a little. “How do you know that?”

 

“I can tell. Go to sleep, love.” He turns back away but pulls Adam’s arm close against his chest. “Get some fucking rest.”

 

Adam lies down, holding Ronan, and tells himself to sleep, but he can’t stop thinking. About how long it’s been since someone called him  _ love _ , since someone use any term of endearment for him. About what he’s going to do in the morning. About how completely hopeless this is. About what this is. About the way Ronan kissed his hands. His mind constructs an alternate life for himself in which he follows Ronan back to the Barns tomorrow and never thinks about politics again. Ronan smells like the Barns. He imagines having the comfort of a shared bed back. He imagines being reminded every day that he is forgiven. It’s a useless thing to think about though. Already he knows what he’s going to choose, what he has to choose. But for the sake of getting a little sleep, he imagines them together, their home, their future, their children. He tells himself it’s harmless to pretend for a little, and falls asleep. 

 

_ hold me down, hold me down _

_ sneaking out the back door _

_ make no sound _

_ knock me out, knock me out _

 

This is the compromise: Ronan flies out to D.C. every other weekend to visit Adam at his new apartment. Ronan can afford it, and his work makes it easy enough to get away on a regular basis. Adam’s work is more difficult delegate, but he’s fastidious in his effort to keep Ronan’s weekends clear so they actually have time together. Ronan arrives late at night on Friday and lets himself in with the duplicate key that Adam gets made for him, and leaves early Monday morning, before the sun comes up. He never leaves the apartment, never gets seen with Adam. They keep the blinds closed. 

 

Ronan doesn’t mind the not leaving the apartment thing. He hates the city and wouldn’t want to go out into it anyway. He’d rather be inside with Adam, or alone if Adam has to go out with something. He likes the place, likes how distinctly  _ Adam Parrish _ it is, how it smells like him. The thing about the blinds does get him a little. It’s not that he’s upset that Adam doesn’t want to get outted -- he’d never be pissed about that -- it’s just that he misses natural light during his time there. The absence of sunlight makes the weekends feel strange and dreamlike. He arrives in the dark and leaves in the dark, and the time in between seems a little unreal. It’s hard to believe there are two full days there. He and Adam spend most of the time in bed, talking or napping or fucking. Sometimes Adam will sleep while Ronan cooks for him and they’ll eat in bed, carefully brushing crumb off afterward. Much of the time is dedicated to getting Adam to sleep. His exhaustion from high school is still there, though he incredibly has less pressure as a Congressman than he did working three ordinary jobs and one supernatural one for a magical forest with a side gig of helping Gansey search for Glendower. And that was all on top of attending and thriving at a rigorous private school. Ronan doesn’t want to know why he still never sleeps. Or rather, he does know and doesn’t want to think about it. And so Ronan sings to him, old Celtic songs from his childhood that feel a little strange in his throat, makes him tea, rubs the knots out of his back until he finally falls asleep.

One night Ronan wakes to Adam sitting up abruptly, breathing heavily. He sits groggily and reaches for Adam’s hand. “Bad dream?” He asks. Adam just nods and rests his forehead against Ronan’s shoulder.

 

“It’s fine,” he says, but his voice is shakey. “Happens all the time.”

 

Ronan isn’t going to ask about it. He knows intimately what a private thing a nightmare is, and he’s never felt better after telling someone about his, and he doesn’t really want to know what haunts Adam at night, but Adam tells him anyway.

 

“It’s Gansey.”

 

Ronan freezes. He thinks it’s probably right to wait for Adam to go on, and he doesn’t know what he would say anyway. He isn’t sure he’d be able to. He hasn’t heard Gansey’s name spoken aloud in a long time. Blue left Henrietta to go travel with the money Gansey had left her and Ronan and Adam don’t talk about it. They go to great lengths not to talk about it.

 

“It’s always the same. It’s always Gansey.”

 

“You don’t have to tell me,” Ronan says. He means  _ please don’t tell me _ , but he hopes Adam won’t make him say it. 

 

“Fuck, Ronan, I need to tell someone.”

 

Ronan turns from Adam and lies down. “Tell a fucking therapist.”

 

Adam grabs Ronan’s shoulder and turns him back toward himself. “We can’t just never deal with this.”

 

Ronan sits back up, but now he isn’t touching Adam. He can’t be, if he’s going to say what he needs to say. “Adam, I come here in the middle of the night. Every time. I come in the middle of the night, and I leave in the middle of the night. I see you four days a month. And then I go home and I fucking drink myself stupid and I wait two weeks to come see you again. And I fucking get why it has to be this way, I’m not saying you have to come out, no one has the right to make you do that. But this is what we have and this is what we are, man. We’re four days a month with the blinds closed. That’s your choice and I’m not saying it’s wrong I’m just saying you can’t decide that’s what we are and also say we have to talk about Gansey and sort out our fucking feelings. That’s what you do when you’re a real couple and I don’t know what the fuck we are but it’s not that.”

 

He hasn’t been looking at Adam, but now he does. Adam looks ready to come apart and Ronan feels a momentary stab of guilt as he thinks about the fact that he’s the person who’s done this, but he knows he needed to say it. He reaches out to put a hand through Adam’s hair and sighs. “I love you. I’m always going to love you but I can’t do this. Not even for you.”

 

Adam nods. “Yeah. That makes sense.”

 

Ronan’s heart constricts because Adam’s accent is back and it reminds Ronan terribly of a younger, softer boy who he isn’t ever going to stop missing. He pulls Adam’s head to his chest and strokes his hair. “I’m still here though. I’ll still take care of you.” He can feel Adam’s ragged breath against his skin and prays that he won’t start crying. Some part of him is screaming out that he needs to get taken care of too, that this isn’t enough, that everything about this is unsustainable, but he steadies himself.  _ For Adam,  _ he thinks.  _ For Adam, for Adam, for Adam _ . 

 

They lie back down and Adam is soon asleep again, his breathing slow and even against the back of Ronan’s neck. Ronan curls up as he usually does, knees tucked to his chest, wishing desperately to feel small and protected and safe. He needs something. A drink, a race, Adam’s hand around his throat. Something to make him forget everything that’s happening and force him simply to exist. It’s Sunday night. In a few hours, his alarm will go off, telling him to get up and go home. He’ll ask Adam to come with him. He does every time. It’s not that he expects Adam to change his mind, it’s just that he wants him to know it’s always an option, that he can leave behind this bullshit life anytime and come live with Ronan at the Barns. He wants to beg him to come, but he doesn’t want to manipulate him. He doesn’t know what to do. 

 

He never falls back asleep, and turns the alarm off the second it starts ringing. Adam doesn’t wake. For a moment, Ronan considers letting him sleep. He’s so constantly worried about Adam getting enough rest that it feels ridiculous to wake him unnecessarily, but he can’t bear the idea of not saying goodbye and he can’t bear the idea of Adam waking alone, hours later, finding that Ronan had left silently. He quietly leaves the bed and gets dressed, shoving his remaining clothes into his suitcase before returning to where Adam is sleeping silently. He shakes his shoulder. “Adam. Hey, Adam.”

 

Adam wakes and looks up at him sleepily, smiling a little. “Ronan.”

 

“I’m heading out.”

 

The smile drops as Adam wakes up more fully. He stands to hug Ronan, reaching up to press Ronan’s head into the crook of his neck. Ronan breathes deeply, taking in Adam’s smell and his sleepy warmth. This, he thinks, is the sense of safety he had been craving earlier. Now it’s only for a moment.

 

“Come with me?” He asks, voice low. 

 

“Ronan.” He isn’t angry or even frustrated, just tired. A voice in pain, saying  _ don’t remind me how much I want to _ .

 

“I know.”

 

“Fly safe, okay? Text me when you land.” He stands on tiptoe to kiss Ronan and watches him as he leaves the apartment. 

 

In the hallways Ronan stands still for a moment, leaning against the wall. He thinks it should get easier, leaving Adam like this, after doing it so many times, but it only ever seems to get more difficult. This kind of exhaustion, he thinks, shouldn’t be allowed. No one should ever feel worn this ragged. He’s almost too tired to be angry, but not quite. He’s not angry that Adam won’t come out, but he’s angry that Adam cares so much about his fucking career, that he keeps bringing Ronan back here when nothing can come of this, that he would mention Gansey. 

 

He walks down the hall to the elevator and then out into the street. It’s dark, but the sun will be up soon. He’ll watch it rise through the huge windows of the airport. Soon, he’ll be back at the Barns and his mind will feel more settled. He’ll go to work and then he’ll come home and he’ll drink and be alright. One way or another. With or without Adam. He wonders how long he’s going to be able to keep this up. Ronan hates how typical this is for Adam, to put off a decision until someone forces his hand. This liminal relationship is his way of putting off the final choice between his job and Ronan. The chance that he’ll be able to keep both is incredibly slim, and as much as Ronan wants to be with Adam, he’s starting to wish that Adam would just make up his mind, even if that means that would mean losing him. 

 

_ throw me in the deep end _

_ watch me drown _

_ knock me out, knock me out _

_ saying that i want more _

_ this is what i live for _

 

The first time Ronan texts Adam to tell him he can’t make it out for a weekend, Adam assumes it’s an anomaly. Ronan is back two weeks later and he kisses Adam harder and longer and Adam thinks everything is fine, it couldn’t have meant anything. The second time, he feels a flare of worry in his stomach, but he pushes it away. This is just him being paranoid. Ronan is allowed to have things come up in life. Just because his job isn’t as high stress as Adam’s doesn’t mean that there’s no emergency that could keep him in Henrietta. But then it happens twice in a row and Adam can’t press his doubts away anymore. Ronan doesn’t lie and he’s sure if he asked, Ronan would tell him that these visits, brief and unfulfilling as they are, take too much out of him to keep him returning twice a month like this. There could be another explanation, but Adam doubts it and he doesn’t really want his fears confirmed, so he doesn’t ask. He still clears his schedule every other weekend just in case, but half the time now he spends it alone, curled in bed with the TV on and nothing in his head. It’s like the old days, he thinks. He doesn’t know how this happened, how he’d shut off the part of his brain that makes him dissociate for days at a time until he’d seen Ronan again. Or maybe that’s not right. Maybe he’d been so far away from himself until he saw Ronan that he’d forgotten what it was like to be awake, and now that he remembers, the return of this absence is unbearable. 

 

Ronan still turns up sometimes. They talk less these days, but when Adam watches Ronan sleeping at night, he gets the urge to shake him awake and ask him  _ what’s happening to us? How can I fix it? Do you still love me?  _ But he doesn’t because he knows all these questions are useless. They’re drifting apart because they don’t have enough time or space, because they can’t have a real life together. Because Adam can’t or won’t commit to Ronan. He can’t fix it, not without giving up everything he’s ever worked for. And of course Ronan still loves him. That’s part of what makes it so terrible. Ronan loves him deeply and fiercely and forever and if he’s visiting less and less frequently, it isn’t out of a lack of love but because he loves Adam too much to be happy in this mirage of a relationship. 

 

Ronan turns over in his sleep and presses his forehead to Adam’s chest. His fingers latch onto Adam’s shirt and he clings to it. Adam takes a moment to consider what it costs Ronan to stay away, what he does on the weekends when he doesn’t come to D.C. Probably he drinks, or goes out looking for trouble in his BMW. He wonders for a moment whether Ronan has anyone back in Henrietta, but he dismisses the thought instantly. Ronan Lynch has many vices, but it would be impossible to imagine that infidelity is one of them. Adam strokes Ronan’s shaved head, the stubble of hair pricking against his palm. He wonders if this is even enough of a relationship that sleeping with someone else would even be considered cheating, but he knows it’s not a thought that would ever occur to Ronan. He presses a kiss to Ronan’s temple and pulls him closer. Ronan makes a small sleepy sound but doesn’t quite wake, just burrows deeper into Adam’s chest. Adam thinks: one day Ronan will stop coming here and he’ll be alone again. Chances are, he won’t even know it’s Ronan’s last visit until years later when he finally gives up on the idea that he’s ever coming back. Ronan hates goodbyes. The idea makes him hold Ronan more tightly, digging his fingers into his shoulders. He tries to push down the rising tide of misery and panic, but it’s impossible. It’s impossible to stop the shaking of his body, impossible not to choke on his own sobs. It wakes Ronan. 

 

He sits up, groggy, and pulls Adam up with him. Blinking the sleep out of his eyes, he holds Adam’s as he sobs, looking completely at sea. “What is it? What’s happening?”

 

Adam knows he shouldn’t say it, but he’s too exhausted and miserable to stop himself. “You’re going to leave me. I know you are, you’re already starting to.”

 

Ronan’s expression is more terrible than if Adam had hit him. He lowers his hands to his laps and slumps a little. “I don’t want to. Fuck, I really don’t want to.”

 

Adam reaches out and puts his hand on the back of Ronan’s neck. He takes a deep breath to try to keep his voice even. “I know you don’t. I’m sorry, I am. I’m just scared. I don’t blame you, I swear.”

 

Ronan nods a little, but he won’t look at Adam. “Maybe I shouldn’t come back.”

 

Adam’s heart skips a beat. “No,” he says, suddenly desperate for a way to fix this. He doesn’t care if he doesn’t get to know when Ronan’s last visit is, he just doesn’t want it to be this one. “Please, no, we can make it once a month. I can come to you --”

 

“No.” Ronan’s interruption is quiet but absolute. “No, you don’t get to come to the Barns unless you mean it, unless you’re staying.” He looks up at Adam. “That’s the whole fucking point, right? I’m not going to let you in unless you’re gonna stick around. I’m not going to invite you to fuck me up again.”

 

_ Again.  _ The word rings in his head. “I wouldn’t be doing it to fuck you up.”

 

“I know.”

 

“I’d be doing it to stay alive.”

 

“Fuck, Adam, don’t say that shit to me.” He takes a deep breath. “I know that. But you’d fuck me up without trying because you’re you.”

 

“What does that mean?”

 

“It means I love you and this is fucked up and if you came home with me I’d never be able to stop seeing you and I’d never be able to move on with my life and. Adam I want a family.” He lets the sentence hang for a moment before he goes on. “I want a family really fucking badly. I used to think, you know, when we were in high school -- I thought it could be with you but. Shit. It’s not an option anymore so I’ll do it on my own if I have to but that’s never gonna happen with the life I have right now. I can’t have a kid and disappear every other weekend to you.”

 

“I know you said -- but what if I came and visited you and I could be a sort of -- godfather or something like that --” His words feels small and useless. Of course this isn’t enough, not for Ronan. Ronan doesn’t do halfway. “I know. I know. It wouldn’t work. It’s just -- for what it’s worth, I would give. I would give almost anything to have a family with you.”

 

“But not your shitty job.”

 

Adam takes a deep, rattling breath. “Not my shitty job.”

 

“Yeah. That’s what I thought.” He leans forward and kisses Adam, long and slow. For a moment everything softens a little and Adam is just himself. Just Adam, being kissed by just Ronan, without any of the bullshit. And of course it doesn’t last. Ronan pulls back and, still watching Adam’s lips, says, “I’m not coming back here. This is the last time.”

 

When Ronan leaves on Monday morning, he holds Adam so tightly that for a moment Adam thinks he just won’t leave at all. Ronan’s body is shaking against his, not quite crying but close. He kisses the spot behind Adam’s ear and, for the last time, whispers “Come with me?” 

 

Adam can only shake his head, desperate. Ronan straightens and steps away from him. He’s about to turn to the door when Adam stops him. “Come here.”

Automatically, Ronan returns. Adam pulls him down to kiss him, hard, and then says, very quietly, “You’re not fucking ever allowed to forget this, okay?”

 

Ronan nods. Then he turns and leaves without looking back, and Adam is left standing alone in his apartment, holding himself. He wants to retreat to Cabeswater. That’s what he needs -- to stop time, to go back, to fix everything he’s ever destroyed. He doesn’t want to go to work today. He goes into the kitchen and pours himself a cup of coffee and, after a moment of hesitation, stirs some whiskey into it and drinks it too hot, burning his tongue and his throat. All he wants is to stop thinking about the fact that he’s never going to see Ronan again. This past year has been a temporary reprieve, a reminder of what it feels like  _ not  _ to be drowning. But of course none of it could last. He should have known better. Leaving his mug in the sink, he goes to the bathroom to shower and spaces out staring at himself in the mirror. He blinks, coming back to himself and actually looks at his reflection. He looks a mess -- sleep-deprived, worn down, miserable. There’s a bruise that Ronan left on his collarbone and he presses his thumb to it, thinking about the fact that it will fade, and in only a few days. He’ll cry when it happens, and he preemptively hates himself for it. For a moment he’s overwhelmed by the irrational desire to see Ronan’s bruises again, one last time, to trace his finger from one to another down Ronan’s back, across his hips, over his chest. Those, too, will fade, and he has to trust that Ronan will remember him without them. He will, of course, because it’s Ronan, but the fear is still there. Adam feels like such a forgettable creature. Closing his eyes, he pulls off his shirt and boxers and steps into the shower. It’s time to move on.

 

_ selfish, taking what i want _

_ and call it mine _

_ i’m helpless _

_ clinging to a little bit of spine _

 

Ronan arrives in Henrietta mid-morning. He drops his bags by the front door and goes immediately to the kitchen, where he pulls a bottle of whiskey down from the cabinet and sits down on the floor to open it. He isn’t going to work today, he doesn’t give a shit, he doesn’t want to think. He doesn’t want to remember Adam kissing him ( _ the last time Adam will ever kiss him _ ) or the fact that he’d said he wanted a family with Ronan too or how the smell of him is still discernible on Ronan’s clothes. He drinks until his head is light and the tips of his fingers are tingling and then he gets up, a little dazed, and goes to his room with the bottle. He thinks about lying down in bed but doesn’t quite make it and opts for the floor instead. It’s nice and cool beneath him. From her corner, Chainsaw makes a concerned noise. Staring up at the ceiling, he runs his fingers over his lips. They’re starting to get numb. He sits up too quickly and almost makes himself puke, but he presses his tongue to the roof of his mouth and the moment passes. This is all fucking pointless. He hates being this screwed up over a boy. He squints at himself in the mirror propped up against the wall and tilts his head to see the bruise on his neck.

 

Tugging off his shirt, he looks at himself, at his dappled skin where he can still see the marks of Adam’s teeth. There’s a peculiar ache to knowing that he had let Adam do this -- that he had  _ wanted  _ Adam to do this -- when it’s been such a long time since he’d really believed they could be together. It isn’t like him. But he’ll always be making exceptions for Adam, and he knows it. It’s why he’d had to cut it off, because loving Adam as much as he does makes him compromise much more than he’d ever meant to. He lies down again and drums his fingers over the glass of the whiskey bottle. Maybe he could go back just once, just one more time. But he knows that’s a pointless thought, if he can justify going back once he can justify going back a hundred times and he just can’t do this anymore. He can’t keep sacrificing himself like this. 

 

He hears the padding of paws in the hallway and one of his dogs comes into the room and pokes at his cheek with a cold, wet nose. “Hey, buddy,” Ronan says, reaching out to pat his head. Dogs always have a sense for when you need a little comfort. The dog lies down and presses up against Ronan’s side. There’s comfort in that, at least. Ronan doesn’t exactly get lonely up here. He’s always been more at ease with animals than people, and there are certainly enough of them here. They keep him company and they don’t try to talk to him, which makes them pretty much perfect in his book. 

 

He falls asleep like that and wakes up in the evening with a headache and a soft pain in his chest that it takes him a moment to identify as  _ missing Adam _ . Pressing his palm to his forehead, he stands carefully and makes his way to the kitchen. The dog gets up and follows him out, butting at the backs of his knees. He makes his way to the kitchen to get food for himself and the dog and to drink enough water to soothe the pounding in his head, and ends up slumped over the table feeling too sick to each his burger. It shouldn’t be this hard. He’s made his trips less frequent, started cutting himself off from Adam emotionally over the course of many months. Very intentionally, he had made the break gradual. He had allowed himself less and less of Adam, so that it would hurt less when it was over. It should hurt less now. But it doesn’t. At least he’s home, though, in the familiar comfort of the Barns, with his animals and his younger brother only fifteen minutes down the road. Adam doesn’t have that. He pushes the thought away and tries to eat a little.

 

He can tell that he’s going to do something stupid tonight, and the only question is whether that’s going to mean taking his car out and driving as fast as he can through the sharp curves and steep slopes of the mountains or getting out his old Aglionby yearbooks and find pictures of the three of them as they used to be. In these pictures, Gansey always looks perfect. A young man with a bright future, as everyone always said. He is upright and comfortable, a hand in his pocket, the other hooked around the strap of his book bag. Ronan hates looking at Gansey’s smile in those photos because it’s so far from real, from honest. Adam usually looks tired, his smile a little crooked, a little forced, but he looks like himself in a way that Gansey doesn’t. Sometimes there are bruises visible on his face or his neck. It used to turn Ronan’s stomach when he would see Adam with a fresh mark from his father, and it still makes him uneasy that there is a record of them in the glossy pages of the yearbooks. And then there’s Ronan, never quite in focus next to his two best friends. Always twitching away from the camera, always uncomfortable with the idea of being photographed. It makes him seem ghost-like, smudgy like Noah was. But he’d been alive then. 

 

He gives up and goes to his room where he keeps the yearbooks under the bed. He takes them back to the kitchen to look at them, hunching over the table to stare at the photos with his nose inches from the paper. The books fall open naturally to the pages featuring himself and his friends. He’s never wanted to look at anyone else. Looking at photos of Adam and Gansey is enough of an indulgence, a submission to the gravitational force of nostalgia. He doesn’t want to see the Aglionby buildings or the other students or the teachers, and he won’t let himself look at pictures of Kavinsky. His feelings toward him are still too strong and too mixed. He pulls the whiskey bottle from the end of the table and starts drinking again. It’s just going to be one of those days. There’s this one photograph of Adam without the rest of them, surprised by the camera, turning with an easy, lazy grin on his face, the kind that meant he was having a rare good day. It’s a good picture and he would like it no matter what, but the thing that makes Ronan keep coming back to it is the date listed next to the photo. It’s from about a week after they started dating. He remembers with terrible clarity how at the beginning of their relationship, Adam had had more good days than bad, something that was true of no other period in Adam’s life during the time that Ronan had known him. For Ronan it’s important to remember that sometimes, that he had made Adam happy, that this whole thing isn’t one sided. That he had been loved. He presses his thumb to Adam’s face in the photograph and thinks about that. Ronan knows he’s being a fucking sentimental idiot, but he’s both too miserable and too drunk to stop. After a moment he shuts the yearbook and leaves it on the table, taking his bottle to bed with him. In his room, he puts on some music, something noisy enough to quiet his mind a little and curls up with his dog. 

 

It’s a matter of adjustment, he tells himself. After all, he survived the years betweens Gansey’s death and the night he went to see Adam at the election party alone. And of course he had missed Adam. Seeking him out again had been prompted by reaching a breaking point in the long process of missing Adam Parrish, but he had been able to hold out a long time, and he’ll be able to do it again. Permanently, this time. He tells himself, it isn’t supposed to be easy. It isn’t supposed to be quick. He knows himself well enough to know that he’s going to love Adam for the rest of his life, that he’s going to miss him for the rest of his life, but it doesn’t have to be unbearable. Surely, he thinks, it will get easier with time. It will get easier with a family. It will just get fucking easier because it has to, because no one can live like this. There are other absences he’s living with. His father and Gansey and Noah and to a lesser extent, Blue. At least Blue still sends him postcards. He is surviving life without them. He will survive life without Adam as well. 

 

When he wakes up he has a headache again. He has to stop doing this. Dragging himself out of bed, he goes into the bathroom, rubbing a hand over his head. It’s time to shave it again. He’s always liked shaving his head. He likes the process of it, slow and methodical, the feel of the water when he showers afterward, the symbolism of it. The removal of all things unnecessary, the cutting away of time. He thinks he looks most purely himself on the day he cuts his hair. It would be a good day for it, he thinks. It’s a day when he needs his comforts, and this has always been one of the best. He pulls his clippers from the cabinet under the sink and plugs them in, letting the white noise wash out his thoughts.

 

_ they rush me, telling me  _

_ i’m running out of time _

_ the shush me (shh) _

_ walking me across _

_ a fragile line _

 

The first decision Adam makes is not to run for reelection. Once Ronan leaves for good, Adam finds himself missing Virginia. Despite his miserable memories of home, he’s always been homesick, and it’s gotten worse lately, and he finds himself thinking incessantly of the Barns. He’s only visited a few times but it always seemed to him like the essence of what a home should be. Comfortable, spacious, lived in, loved. He doesn’t hate the city the way Ronan had, but it isn’t and will never be home to him. His job is wearing but unfulfilling, his personal life essentially a blank. If his high school self could see him in his expensive suits with a huge office, a job in the U.S. House of Representatives, he would probably cry out of happiness. Now, it feels frighteningly empty. It’s not like he’d done all that work for nothing, of course. He’s proud of what he’s accomplished and he never wants to go back to the kind of poverty he was living in. He cares less these days about making more money but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t think every day about how much less stress he’s under knowing that he can go to the grocery store and buy whatever food he wants. Knowing he has health insurance. Knowing he could buy a plane ticket to the other side of the country if he needed to. The constant, grating worry is gone, and with it the need to find some way -- any way -- to make a good living. He begins to think he could find a good job in Virginia. He begins to think he could find a job where he wouldn’t have to be closeted, a job he could do from home. He begins to think that  _ home  _ might be an obtainable concept. 

 

Before he leaves D.C. he gets a job as a writer for a political website with the assurance that he can live wherever he wants as long as he’s willing to travel occasionally. He calls Maura and gets from her a promise that he can stay at 300 Fox Way until he finds an apartment if he needs to. Maura’s tone is a little too understanding when he tells her he might not need to stay there at all. Still, he’d rather know he has a backup plan. After a year, he isn’t completely sure that Ronan will take him back. He hasn’t answered the phone any of the times that Adam has called him. Part of Adam wonders if Ronan ever even checks his phone these days. Every time it had gone straight to voicemail. It seems quite possible to him that he’s already missed his chance, that he’s waited too long. It’s a long drive from D.C. to Henrietta, and then it’s another hour through the mountains to the Barns. Adam can see why Ronan likes this drive so much. It’s too much like Ronan himself for there not to be a sense of kinship there. 

 

He pulls into the driveway, next to Ronan’s black BMW, still the same one after all these years. Ronan may have done his best to wreck the transmission back in high school but he’s clearly taken good care of it since then. When Adam steps out of his car and walks up to the door to knock, his hands are shaking. It takes a while for Ronan to answer the door. When he does, his expression is blank, a little wary.

 

“Hi,” Adam says, feeling pathetic. There’s silence for a moment. “I didn’t run for re-election.”

 

“Yeah,” Ronan says, and his voice, like his expression, is blank, purposefully drained of emotion. “I read that in the paper.”

 

“I’ve come back here for good.” He takes a shaky breath. He’s nervous and because of this his accent is strong and he doesn’t feel up to trying to mask it. “Of course if you don’t want me here I can find my own place.”

 

“If I don’t want you here?” Ronan is frowning at him, looking like he’s trying to work out some kind of puzzle. “You mean -- you mean move in with me?”

 

“Listen I’m sorry I came out here, it was stupid to think you’d still --”

 

“No wait, Adam --” Ronan looks lost and it occurs to Adam that he might not understand what he means by this. “I said -- I told you -- if you’re coming here it’s for good, it’s for real.”

 

Adam nods. “Yeah. I know. That’s why I’m here.”

 

Ronan just blinks at him.

 

“I was fucking miserable in Washington, okay? Congress was miserable and the city was miserable and not having any friends was miserable and being closeted was miserable and I would think every day about what you told me about wanting a family and it’s what I want too. I want a fucking life. That’s what I worked so hard for, right? So I’m not going to do what I always planned to do, that’s fine. Because it wasn’t making me happy and what’s the point of having run myself into the ground my entire life if it’s not even to get me somewhere that makes me happy. And god, you make me happy. More than anything else I’ve found in this world so I’ve come back to you. If you’ll take me, you know.”   
  


Ronan still looks shell-shocked and uncomprehending. Adam steps into the threshold and stands on tiptoe to very gently kiss Ronan. There’s a brief pause and then Ronan bends down to kiss him again, his arms coming around Adam and actually lifting him off the ground for a moment. Then he holds Adam against himself, Adam’s head tucked under his chin. Adam can hear the pounding of his heart and he thinks,  _ this is the most at home I have ever felt. _

 

“You’ve come to stay?” Ronan asks, quiet and still, still uncertain.

 

“Yes.”

 

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

 

With both hands, Ronan lifts Adam’s face to his to kiss him again, then takes his hand and leads him into the house. “There’s something I should show you.”

 

The entire house smells like Ronan and for a moment Adam thinks this happiness can’t possibly be real. They stop outside of a closed door and Ronan lifts a finger to his lips before opening it. 

 

Inside is a small and brightly painted room filled with kid’s toys and there, in the corner, is a crib with a sleeping child. “I just put her down for a nap,” Ronan whispers to Adam. Adam stares up at him in amazement. He had known that Ronan wanted a family, but he hadn’t realized that it would happen so quickly. “She’s about a year old but I’ve just had her for about two months. Two months next week, actually.”

 

“You have a daughter,” Adam says softly. Ronan just smiles and steps up to the crib, lifting the baby into his arms. Adam remembers with terrible vividness the day that he had shown them the baby mice, how he’d held one to his cheek. Ronan looks now as he had then and it stirs up in Adam a confusing mixture of grief and happiness. 

 

“Her name is Jane,” Ronan says, and Adam lets out a sad little laugh. Ronan looks at Adam and there’s still an edge of doubt in his eyes. “If things work out with you here -- with you and me -- she could be your daughter too.”

 

Adam’s heart is in his throat. All of this seems too good to be true, the impossible dream of happiness that he’d cut himself off from for so long. “That would --” He stops, swallows, tries to find the right words, but Ronan seems to understand anyway. 

 

He smiles at Adam, wide and sincere. “Do you want to hold her?”

 

Adam nods and Ronan settles the baby very carefully in his arms. He’s gripped by a momentary fear that he’ll drop her or somehow damage her, but it passes. Everything about this place feels safe. “Do you think I could be a good dad?”

 

“The best,” Ronan says, and presses a kiss to Adam’s forehead. 

 

Later, when they’ve left Jane to sleep, Ronan takes Adam to the back porch, where they sit on the swing and look out over the fields behind the house. 

 

“You know,” Adam says after a few minutes of silence, “I wasn’t totally sure you’d take me back. After a year and all that. After all the shit before.”

 

Ronan shrugs. “I would take you back after pretty much anything, honestly. You’re Adam Parrish and I’m always going to be in love with you. I couldn’t stay with you before because you wouldn’t make it permanent but you’ve come here now to tell me you will.”

 

Adam takes Ronan’s hand and squeezes it. He’s always loved this about Ronan -- his deep and complete loyalty, the simplicity of his love. They sit there for a long time, talking before they have to go back inside to check on Jane and feed her. It feels bizarrely and wonderfully like an ordinary day. They eat together and carry Adam’s suitcase up to Ronan’s bedroom, where Ronan clears space for him in the dresser. Adam meets several (but Ronan says not all) of the dogs. That night, they curl up together in Ronan’s bed and Adam falls asleep more easily than he has in months with Ronan’s head on his chest. He wakes a few times to the sound of Jane crying, and Ronan gets up to soothe her and then comes tumbling back into bed, happy and sleepy. Every time he falls back asleep with Ronan in his arms, he feels a little stunned at the idea that this is his life now. This happiness is his. He’s allowed to stay here, he’s allowed to have Ronan. Every time he wakes back up, he needs a moment to be certain that it’s all real, but he thinks that just maybe, enough mornings at the Barns will cure him of every doubt.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Angie for proofing!


End file.
